4/25/15
I
met with the Director of World Vision this morning to discuss when she would
like me to teach English to her staff. I met her yesterday at the Health
Olympics Competition and she asked if I would teach lessons at World Vision, I
said of course, thinking it would be a great way to network and collaborate
with her company. So this morning I met her and 7 of her staff members who want
to better their English skills and decided on lesson twice a week for an hour
and a half at a time. When I asked what subjects they were interesting in
learning about/ what in English they want help on (grammar, speaking, reading,
writing, etc.), they answered that they would like a pre-test the first lesson
to find out what subjects and skills they are lacking in and then base the rest
of the classes off of that. I thought it was such a typical scientist/doctor
answer, I love it. They also requested homework assignments and that every ten
10 days a test on the information they learned previously as well as scheduling
English Days twice a month. The director explained English Days meant that the
staff was only allowed to speak English the entire day and if someone began to
speak Mongolian, they would have to pay 5,000 Tugriks every time which would go
into their funding account for the community. They all joked that on those days
everyone would be sick or take a day off. The staff members that I met were so
sweet and so excited to begin English classes. A requirement of World Vision is
that there staff must be able to read English and translate into English, I am
not sure what level they have to test at for those two skills, but it will be
nice to teach a class that already has a base to grow on. They are all my age
too and most of them unmarried! It is nice to see the female staff workers
taking time to build a career instead of jumping into motherhood like most of
their peers. They call it “living like an American.” Whenever someone is in
their mid-twenties and not married with children my counterpart always tells me
“oh, that person is living like an American.” Haha. During the meeting, the
Lead Health Officer of Arkhangai’s World Vision, poked her head in and asked if
she could meet with me after.
I went to her office down the hall and she showed
me the health goal and objectives for the remaining part of the fiscal year and
asked me to help her with two of them. The first one, is getting mothers to
volunteer in kindergartens and in the community more. Volunteerism in Mongolia
is not common and one of World Visions goals is to get woman more involved in
the community and out of the house. The second one which I start working on
Monday is Child Abuse. It is pretty common in Mongolia, abuse as a whole is
common. World Vision is trying to set up a reporting system for schools for
children who are suspected of being abused at home. Right now there is nothing
in place to help these children, so she asked my opinion on the matter and if I
had any ideas. I told her that I think we need to start with training the
social workers of the schools about what abuse is and ways to handle it. They
would then train teachers about it and teach them ways to talk to children
about it. The first step is awareness and discussions about it, because right
now it is perfectly acceptable to beat your children and wife. Today, I witness
a child being slapped three times on the face by his teacher. It is very common
to see corporal punishment used in schools, even though in 2005 a law was
passed in Mongolia saying that it is illegal to use it in schools. But if no
one is reporting it or aware that it is an issue, teachers just get away with
it. The second step is to do community trainings and parent trainings, how to
properly discipline a child, how to deal with a crying baby or temper tantrums
in constructive ways. Pregnant women in Mongolia must take parenting classes in
order to receive their prenatal vitamins and other services. I think that these
parenting classes need to be mandatory for fathers as well as mothers and be
held on weekends when the fathers can attend, not during the week day mornings
when they are at work. While these trainings are going on, we can work on
coming up with a reporting system that is easy for teachers to use and come up
with resources and tool kits that can be used when a case of abuse does come up.
Also, how to properly speak to the child and give them support. Also, we need
to include the police in the trainings and reporting system. There are so many
things that need to be done, so I talked to my HD director (whose sister is the
World Vision Director, very powerful woman in that family) and asked her if I
could involve the Adolescent Center Staff of the Health Department in this
project. She said yes, that she thinks it is a great idea to work with WV and
gave me three staff members’ names that she thinks would be great assets to the
project. Ariuk helped me to speak to the three women who seemed to be happy to
help. They will go to WV with me on Monday to meet with the Health Officer
again. I am really excited to be a part of this project. Today I downloaded a
bunch of readings and figures about Child Abuse, Campaigns and Awareness,
Trainings and education materials that I will read this weekend, so I can speak
more knowledgeably about the subject in our meeting. I will translate the parts
I think are important into Mongolian so that my coworkers can read them and I
am going to make a list of common words on this topic in English and Mongolian
that are bound to come up as we work on the project, so that it will be easier
to work with each other. It will be much easier to just point at a word on the list
rather than search through the dictionary every time we want to express an
idea.
I
also went to School #2 again to help tutor a 9th grade student and
had Batkhsishig and her friend with me
the whole day again. Her friend is an 11th grade boy who wanted help
on his homework and to practice speaking with me. The three of us went out to
lunch and talked about astrology the whole time. Let me tell you that is a hard
topic to talk about in Mongolian. For a solid 5 minutes they kept telling me
that my astrology sign was an insect that looked like a crab. I could not think
of an insect that looked like a crab, and I told them that my sign was Libra,
which apparently the names we use are not the same names everyone else calls.
So I tried to explain that my sign was a scale and acted out a scale, which
must have looked ridiculous. Finally they understood and I then thought of
scorpion, which was the crab like insect they were thinking of ( I don’t think
it is an insect, but I don’t know) and taught them that we call it Scorpio.
They then taught me some swear words in Mongolian and asked me what some of the
American “rude words” they heard in movies meant. I told them what two meant.
Haha and today whenever Batkhsishig messed up on her practice tests, she said sh**
and then would look at me and laugh. I wish I could take back explaining what
that meant and when people use it. I
told her ladies should not say that word and she looked at me and said “only
men can say it?” I said “yes, it is a word used by men”, there are certain
words in Mongolian that only woman or men use, so she believed it, and stopped
saying it. Phew.
For the last hour of work, I taught
English to one of my HD coworkers daughter. She is in 5th grade and
so this is her first year learning English, she is so cute and has very good
pronunciation.
4/28/2014
Saturday was the Easter party at
School #2. It went fabulously. 70 students from the 8th grade came
with boiled eggs to dye and excited to play some games. I first explained what
Easter is and what kinds of things Americans do to celebrate Easter. Then they
all decorated their eggs, they could choose from dying them, drawing on them
with markers or decorating with stickers. They had each brought two eggs and it
was so fun to watch them get creative and decorate them. Once the eggs were
decorated they then split up into teams of 10 to play the games I had prepared.
The first game was an egg relay race with all team members, where they had to
carry the egg on a spoon as fast as they could, if they dropped the egg, their
team was disqualified. The next game was the three legged race, so each team
had to pick two people to compete in the game. Thirdly, they played human knot,
this time everyone played at the same time. It was hilarious to try to watch
them unknot their arms. At first, they had no idea what to do and didn’t
understand, but once me and the teacher walked around and got them started, they
soon figured out the purpose/strategy and were able to successfully unknot
themselves. They were climbing over each other, twisting arms so much that I
though numerous times the students shoulder was going to dislocate. I think
they enjoyed that game the most. The last game everyone participated in was the
egg rolling competition. They had to roll their eggs using a spoon down the gym
floor, which was uneven and broken in parts, so the eggs all cracked and
although hard boiled, many of the kids were hitting them so that eggs guts were
flying everywhere. They got a kick out of it, but it made a mess. Each team
that won an event won a prize (erasers, pencils, bouncy balls, pencil sharpener
or stickers). Once the games were over, I then passed out candy to all of them
and they ran to the stage to grab their eggs to bring home. I think that they
had a really great time, they were laughing and giggling the entire 2 hours the
party went on and the teachers had a great time too.
After the Easter party, I met up
with Jen and Marc at Fairfield’s Guesthouse. It was such a gorgeous day, we
decided to rent mountain bikes and bike down to the river and hang out there
for the day. The river is a little over 5k away from the center of town, so it
was a nice bike ride. Although, not a very far ride, it is up and over hills
and through mud and rough terrain so by the end of the 5k, my legs were sore.
We picked a spot near the river and laid out for two hours, not caring that we
were frying our skin, because at this point any color to my pasty white skin is
good color. The river is just gorgeous and is surrounded by tall rock cliffs
and never ending fields with animals grazing everywhere. Near the river were 5
gers, probably a family compound, and Jen had seen a sign for a delguur (small
store), I did not believe her at first, because who would go to this delguur in
the middle of the countryside, but we hopped onto our bikes to find some
snacks. Low and behold there was a tiny little store next to a ger. We went
inside the cutest little old man greeted us. We then began speaking to him in
Mongolian and when he realized we could speak it, he went and got his wife and
grandkids. He introduced them to us and they asked us questions about our lives
in Arkhangai. He then took us out back of the store and showed us his horses
and gave us binoculars to look through. Through the binoculars we were able to
see a huge herd of sheep, which were apparently his. They all then followed us
to our bikes and waved and yelled goodbye at least 5 times to us as we rode
back to the river.
Once we were good and fried, we
biked back to town to return the bikes. I then went home to clean up and cook
some dinner. A little after 9pm, I went over to Will’s to hang out with the
Korean and Japanese volunteers. It was a lot of fun, but I was so exhausted I
ended up falling asleep in the middle of the “party”. I woke up around 1130 and
went home and got the best sleep.
Sunday morning, I woke up and
decided to do a thorough cleaning of my apartment and do a load of laundry. I
scrubbed the floors and walls in the kitchen with a wash cloth. I really wish
they had mops here and then did as much laundry as my clothes line would hold.
Jen and I then met up and decided to go back to the river and study for the GREs
there. We decided to take a taxi there. We found a nice spot semi in the shade
so we would not burn more and studied for a couple hours. We walked along the
river for a bit and wadded in the water. There was a herd of horses grazing nearby
and these orange colored ducks all around. It was another gorgeous day. We took
a bunch of pictures and then decided to start walking back to town. It was such
a nice walk, the last quarter of it a car traveling towards town asked if we
would like a ride, so we said yes. We climbed in to the car, which was full of
his family (wife, son and mother). His son was adorable, he was wearing a
superman outfit and kept making funny faces at us and laughing uncontrollably
when we would make them back at him. The driver ended up being a Mongolian man
who is a pastor at one of the local Christian Churches. He spoke English well
and told us that he was thankful for us being in his country and that he thinks
volunteers are the best people, because they are “Gods helpers”. He was so sweet
and when he dropped us off at the restaurant and we asked him how much money.
He told us we did not need to pay him for the ride because we are helping his
people. It was so nice of him.
5/29/2014
May 29,2014, today marks the one
year mark since I stepped onto a plane that flew me across the globe to a
country that I knew nothing about, to help people that I have never met. I can
vividly remember hugging my parents and sister goodbye in the airport, trying
to hold back the tears that inevitably began to fall as I waited for my turn in
the security line. The longest I had ever gone without seeing them was 2
months, how was I supposed to make 2 years? But here I am, one year later,
doing it (although it is still not easy and there are many days when I think,
if I just had one of them to give me a hug, the day would be so much better).
For those of you who don’t know how close I am with my family, I am extremely
close, with not only my immediate family but my extended family as well.
Growing up there were breakfast club meeting (Tuesday mornings, we would drive
to Galway, where my DziaDzi (Polish for grandpa) would take me, my sister and
my cousins out to breakfast), in the summer there was Wednesday swim days,
Galway Players Theatre group play practices, my Dziadzi teaching my cousins,
sister and I to play the piano and another instrument of our choice (he was a
music teacher and principle), my sister, cousins and I practicing writing and
grammar with my nana in the summers (she was a high school English teacher), my
grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles coming to watch my field hockey,
basketball and horseback riding competitions and us going to their various
sporting events, skiing and snowboarding trips with my cousins, tubing down the
river with everyone in the summer, family vacations to Myrtle Beach every year,
cousin sleepovers, family reunions every summer with the downstate family,
still every Sunday everyone who is around has lunch at my nana’s house, every
holiday and birthday is still spent altogether. Now that I think of it, every
single childhood memory I have is full of my grandparents, parents, aunts,
uncles and cousins smiling faces. I am so blessed to have such an amazing
family, that has always stuck together and been there for all the wonderful
times and for all of the worst. Being away, as really helped me realize how
lucky I am and how much I took for granted the relationships I had. Not
everyone is fortunate enough to grow up the way I did. I can’t wait to see what I accomplish in the
next year, and know that the minute I step off that plane back in America next
June/July and see my family’s faces, I will have even more tears, but they will
be happy ones.
Now to try to recap the past month,
I have really lacked in the blogging department this month. Luckily, I am
neurotic about using calendars and planners, so I can just look back and find
out exactly what I did each day in May. Haha. In the beginning of the month,
May 2, I took part in day long “arts”
competition. Each health agency in Tsetserleg competed in a competition that
consisted of singing, dancing, playing musical instruments, a motivational
speech and a short one act play. We had practiced for about a week before the
competition. The HD hired a professional actor from UB to write the play and
teach the choreography. It was very important that we did well. (side note:
many times the HD does not have money for community trainings, but yet we
always find money to hire professionals to help with the competitions, it’s
interesting to see what their priorities are) So at first they had me singing a
duet with my counterpart, in Mongolian. They told me this one week before the
competition and immediately after they told me, I went to Ariuk and told him
that I think it is impossible for me to learn an entire song in Mongolian and
preform it well in less than a weeks time. He agreed and had it changed. This
time I sang in a group of women, so if I messed up the words a little, it was
unnoticeable. They then asked me if I played any musical instruments, I told
them I could play the piano, clarinet and semi play the drums (I had half a
year of lessons in high school for marching band). Everyone looked at me like
they had no idea what I was talking about and rephrased their question, do I
play any traditional Mongolian instruments, which I quickly answered with a no.
So next they wanted to put me into the one act play and dance, which I was fine
with, I had done a lot of acting and dancing in the past with the Galway
Players Theatre group. The dance was “hip hop” and at one point the
choreographer stopped practice and asked if I was a professional dancer, which
prompted me to burst out laughing, I said no I just really like to dance and
used to go out to dance clubs a lot when I was in college. Shout out to Mojos
and all the other nightclubs in Buffalo for teaching me everything I know.
Haha. Then I received my part in the play. I would be playing a selfish, looks
obsessed Canadian girl named Brittany. You like how they changed America to
Canada. When I asked why Canada they said they didn’t want to offend me by
having me play a stereotypical rich blonde American girl that they see in the
movies here. Haha. So the gist of the play was there was a mother who had three
“bad” sons, that is actually the title of the play “3 bad sons”, which was
actually not the nicest play, pretty terrible actually. A mother had three
sons, one who was an alcoholic, one who was married to a foreigner and another
who was gay. It really shows the stereotypes and discrimination that is
prevalent today in Mongolia, that to be married to a foreigner is perceived as
bad and to be gay is bad. So obviously, I was the wife to the one son. I had to
act obnoxious and selfish the whole time and rude towards my mother in law.
Every time I walked on stage, Britney Spears songs played, and my husband would
throw flower petals on the ground in front of me. At one point, they had him on
all fours with me sitting on his back as a chair, while he shined my shoes. I
was also about a foot taller than him, because they insisted I wear tall heels.
In the end everyone thought it was hilarious and the mother made “amends” with
all three sons, sort of accepting them, but not really. People still talk about
the play a month later and ask me to reenact parts of the play, they liked how
I strutted on stage and played with my hair. The little girls I teach, always
start their dance routines with it now. Strutting and primping. We ended up
coming in second place overall, which really angered my HD coworkers. They
really wanted to win.
The next weekend, I went to the
countryside with my friend Gerlee to visit her family who are nomadic herders.
It was by far my favorite thing that I have done in Mongolia. We took the bus
to a nearby soum, which was a little over an hour away. Her father met us at
the bus stop to bring us another hour away into the mountains to where their
ger was located. It is the most gorgeous place I have ever seen. Their ger is
completely isolated from the outside world. I was in awe as her father drove us
up one of the mountains and then dropped us off. Gerlee and I wanted to hike,
so we had him drop us off and take our bags to the ger, while we hiked the rest
of the way. It was up one mountain, down it and up another over and over, until
we reached the valley where her ger was. We walked along a path and passed her
families winter location. You could see the dirt circle where the ger was once
located. We then finally came upon her ger in its spring location. It was
surrounded by mountains on three sides and in front of it was a valley that
went on forever, scattered with hundreds of goats, sheep, horse and cows. I
turned to her and said I had never seen so many animals in my life, she laughed
and said wait until we walk to the river, you will see so many more. As we came
up to her ger, we passed the goat pen, where her younger brother was hard at
work shearing the goats for cashmere and her father was gather the foals and
fillies into a pen. Her mother came out of the ger with a huge smile and came
over to hug us and kept telling me how beautiful I was over and over. It was
the first time she had met an American. She ushered us into the ger and
immediately served us milk tea and candies. We sat and chatted with her for a
while and then her dad came in and asked if I would like to help herd! Gerlee
had told me before we left that I would be able to help do countryside chores
and I was so excited to do so. I jumped up and said of course I wanted to herd
the animals! He asked if I knew how and I said no, but I do know how to run and
yell (herding in my mind). Gerlee translated what I said to him and he laughed
and shook his head, no, if I did that I would scare the animals away. So on our
walk over to the various locations of the animals ( all of which had made their
way to the tops of different hills and small mountains), Gerlee taught me the
sounds of a herder. Each herder has different unique sounds that they use with
their animals, it helps to distinguish what animals are theirs, when herds get
mixed up or gather together. There are different sounds for different actions
that you want the animals to do. Also, different arm movements. Once we hiked
up to the animals, I got to test out my newly learned sounds, and guess what it
is a lot harder than one would think. The sheep did not listen to me, which
Gerlee said is usually what happens, because they are lazy animals, so she
handed me a stick to hit their backs with to get them moving. After a couple of
tries with different groups of animals, I finally got the sheep and goat
herding down and was having a blast chasing the animals and herding them down
to their pens. At that moment, I thought, I could do this for the rest of my
life, just hike around all day herding animals. It would not be a bad gig. It
is actually a lot of fun, until it was time to herd the cows, which did not
listen to me at all, and ended with me throwing all my weight onto them and
pushing them one by one to their barn. Gerlee just laughed the whole time.
After a couple hours, we were done herding and went back to the ger for dinner.
I helped make the soup and as a
snack while the soup cooked they gave me fresh yogurt made from goats milk that
they had made that morning. It is an acquired taste, one that I did not like
last summer during training, but have grown to love now. Adding a Tsp. of sugar
makes all the difference I learned. Gerlee and I then went outside and helped
shear goats, a process that starts with tying all the goats legs together so it
can’t kick you and then tying its head to a post and taking a big brush and
brushing to get the cashmere. It is a tedious job and the entire time the goat
is screaming and wiggling. That is one job I would not enjoy. After a shearing
a couple goats, her mom and dad were worried that I was exhausted and said that
I should go lie down in the ger because I am not used to such work, I tried to
reassure them that I was fine and actually enjoying doing all the chores, but
her parents won out and into the ger I went to have another helping of yogurt
because it is good for the stomach her mother said. Let me tell you, fresh
yogurt, is hard on the stomach. They then blew up an air mattress for me and
Gerlee to sleep on and I fell quickly asleep to the sounds of the Mongolian
news on the radio in the background. The next morning we woke up early to milk
the cows.
I had never milked a cow before,
and was excited to try it out. I was outfitted with a Mongolian milking del so
that my clothes would not get dirty and headed out to the cow barn with Gerlee.
First, we had to let out each baby one by one to its mother so it could feed
for a couple minutes before we milked it. We would then tie the baby in front
of the mother, and milk the mother cow. We did this one by one over and over
until all the cows were milked. Once we collected enough milk, the baby was
allowed to go back and feed on its mother. I am not a good cow milker and
failed all but one time on getting milk to come out. Gerlee’s mom stepped in
and finished the rest of the cows for me. The best part was opening the gate
and letting a calf out and watching it run around to find its mother. A couple
of them clearly had no idea which one was its mother, and would go up to a cow
and try to feed, but the big cow would kick at it; clearly signaling it was not
its mother. It was so cute to watch them run around, trying to find their
mothers. After the milking was over we went in to have breakfast, which was
like hard chewy cream that was from the milk they had made. Again, apparently
good for the stomach, but not good for mine. We then had to herd again, this
time walking down to the river, were hundreds and hundreds of animals had
gathered. Gerlee said it was three families worth of animals and that we must
try to find her families animals and move them away from the river towards the
mountains. I thought this was an impossible task because how would we be able
to tell which ones were her family’s, she said to just being to make the sounds
she taught me and they would all gather together. Well after about an hour of
making sounds, no animals had gathered and she began to get nervous that we
would not be able to find her animals. At this point, two herdsman rode up on
motorbikes and asked her if she knew which ones were her’s, she said no and
they weren’t exactly sure of which ones were theirs either. So they began to
drive around making their sounds and rounding up their animals. Eventually, we
were able to herd her animals away from the others and decided to sit down near
the river and take a break before we herded them back to the ger. We chatted
about her childhood, growing up in the countryside and then we decided to go
for a quick hike up one of the mountains nearby. At the top, the view was
astounding; you could see all the animals gathered near the river, like little
colonies of ants. After hiking back down we herded the animals the rest of the
way. On our way back we saw one of the sheep give birth! We got back to the ger
and had lunch, another type of soup, and visitors stopped by to eat with us.
Everyone was really nice and her parents kept telling their friends how I
helped out with all the chores and each time he friends would reply that I was
a great girl and they really respected me. After lunch, we had to herd the
animals again. The herding never stops, but I was happy to help out her father
who usually does it. He has been having heart and back problems, Gerlee said,
and she asked if I would be able to show him some exercises he could do for his
back. When we got back to the ger, I showed her dad some stretches he could do
to relieve some pain in his back and some exercises he could do to strengthen
it. He then asked Gerlee to ask me about exercises and stretches he could do
for his heart. I told Gerlee, that there are no specific stretches/exercises
for the heart, but that he should just not try to overdo the work and to ride
his motorbike more when he is feeling tired. He walks and hikes so much
already, I felt so bad cause when she translated this to him, his face dropped
and he looked upset that there was no magical stretch for his heart. But I told
him to keep doing his back stretches and it would feel better in time. That
evening, her dad drove us back to the bus stop. The bus ended up being 4 hours
late. To fill the time, Gerlee showed me around her old school and the town she
grew up in before they moved to the countryside. While she was growing up her
mom worked in the local government as the mayor (I think, if I understood her
correctly), so they had a house in town as well, that they lived in while the
kids went to school and then would move back out to the ger in the summer. It
was really neat seeing the town, it was so tiny!
The weekend of the 9th,
three American study abroad students came to Tsetserleg to conduct research on
Emergency Medicine, Technology in schools and what opportunities disabled
people have in the countryside. They got to pick their own topics and then
travel around to different aimags to gather data for their final thesis. They
were so nice and I ended up hanging out with them a lot while they were here. I
helped set up interviews with various organizations and community members for
them. We went out to dinner and lunch a couple times over the week that they
were here and ended up renting bikes and taking a trip to the river. It was a
gorgeous day. I really liked hearing about their experience in Mongolia as a
student, so different from mine, but still really cool. They got to do a lot of
more touristy things; they gave me a bunch a recommendations of places to visit
around Mongolia. I also had them over to my apartment one of the nights to just
hang out and drink a couple beers. It was awesome having other Americans in
town.
Now onto the work I have been
doing…I am teaching so many English classes now, which has turned out to be a
great way to network and get the help of other organizations on projects. I
teach their staff English and they get to know me, and then they are willing to
help me or ask for my help on things they are doing. It’s great and since I am
not a TEFL volunteer, I don’t have to take the classes too seriously, and I
just try to make them as fun as possible. The more games and activities, the
better. Every week, I teach two classes at the Health Department, two classes
at World Vision, 5 classes to the HD children, 1 class at a local school and 3
lessons to my HD director.
I teach and English class every
afternoon to the Health Department’s staffs’ children. They come in after
school and for about two hours each afternoon I teach them new vocabulary and
play games. It started with just one girl, who I would tutor and now it is up
to 6 girls and 1 boy (who comes occasionally). As of right now, it is just
fifth graders, which means this was their first year learning English in
school, so it is a lot of fun to just teach them new vocabulary and not have to
worry about grammar and different verb tenses. Also, one of the doctors here
has a son who is 25 years old who is mentally disabled, so he comes to my class
too. He has already learned the alphabet and how to say yes and no when I ask
him certain questions. All of them learn so quickly. So far I have taught them
the topics of family members, colors, numbers, animals, body parts, certain
jobs and how to ask simple questions. I have been using card games, dances and
songs to teach them, as well as having them practice writing the words and
asking each other questions. We have played UNO a billion times to go over
colors and numbers, sang and danced to Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, BINGO,
Twister (which I made with paper and tape it to the floor) drawing pictures and
labeling, Old Maid, which had them practicing the question “Do you have
a/an_____?” and answering it in a complete sentence, as well as practicing
different types of jobs, since the cards contain police officer, teacher,
doctor, nurse, etc. They really enjoyed it.
At the end of each lesson, we dance. It started out the first day, them
asking me what a traditional American dance looked like, which puzzled me,
because we do not really have one, like Mongolians do. So I ended up teaching
them the Macarena, Hokey Pokey and a line dance. We did not have internet that
day either, so I could not look up the real songs, so we ended up doing each of
the dances to Pitbull songs (their request). We have now added Gangam style and
the Gentlemen to the mix and each class we do all five dances in the middle of
the lesson to unwind and give their brains a break. It is hilarious, because
they put all the dances together and made a routine out of them! On Tuesday we
baked cupcakes from scratch, which never turn out the same as the premade cake
mix, but were still good and they made a book using the English words they have
learned. We also made the frosting from scratch, which they already knew how to
do because it is similar to making the sugar cream they use on some of their
breads. It was a lot of fun and we ended up baking enough that we were able to
give all the HD staff a cupcake. We also made lemonade and once the cupcakes
were made and decorated they delivered them and a glass of lemonade to the
staff members. They had to introduce themselves in English and ask each staff
member how their day was.
Last Friday, the girls surprised me
with dinner and gifts. I was driving around town with my counterpart visiting
all the local schools to tell them about the “No Smoking” campaign and competition
the HD is holding and they called him to tell him to drop me off at one of the
local restaurants at 5pm. So at 5pm I was dropped off, and walked into the
restaurant to find the 6 girls sitting in a booth, once they saw me they yelled
surprise. One of them immediately got up and grabbed my hand and ushered me
into the booth where they all began asking what I wanted to drink and eat. They
already had coffee waiting for me, I have told them numerous times it is my
favorite beverage, I then ordered a hot chocolate. They handed me the menu and
told me to order whatever I wanted, so I ordered my favorite dish, which is
like a sheep stir fry with egg, and they all ordered the same thing as me.
After a couple minutes of chatting about our day, one of the girls told me to
close my eyes and she covered them with her hands. They then told me to open
them and put in my hands a beautiful shadow box that contained different
Mongolian symbols. I have seen it hanging in many Mongolian homes, it is meant
to bring luck, health and prosperity to those in the house. They then all
hugged me and thanked me for “being their friend”, which of course brought
tears to my eyes. We then enjoyed the delicious dinner and went back to the
Health Department to play floor hockey, using various objects we found lying
around the building.
My World Vision English classes are
also a lot of fun. In order to work at World Vision, they must take an English
test, to be hired. So they all have a great basis of English that I have just
been building off of. The director of World Vision takes the class very
seriously and said that they must be given an assignment after each lesson and
each month, they must take an exam. Also, once a month, they will have a
designated English Day at the office, where they can only speak English all
day, if they speak Mongolian, they must pay a set amount which will go into
their funding for projects. She sat in on one of the lessons last week and half
the class had not done their homework, she got so angry and scolded them all,
telling them that if they attended the lessons they must do the homework. Her
reasoning is she is allowing them to learn English during their work hours, so
they must take it seriously and show improvement, if not then they will not be
allowed to attend lessons and must stay in their office and work. This does
make sense since they are getting out of almost four hours of work each week,
still getting paid like they are working.
Throughout the month,
I have had meetings with the World Vision Health Officer, and the HD Adolescent
Center’s Director and the Pediatrician at the HD. We have been discussing World
Vision’s Child Abuse project and made a tentative plan to begin the project. We
decided that the first step would be to talk to the Government and Education
Center. Both of these places have information that we need pertaining to the
prevalence of child abuse in the Aimag and then to set up interviews with at
risk youth and known abused youth in the community. Also to make community
surveys on the matter and form a focus group that will discuss the topic and
brainstorm ideas about future trainings and workshops. Abuse in general is
extremely common here. Schools still use corporal punishment and its not
against the law to abuse your children or spouse. Tt is so hard getting them to
see why abuse is wrong, so first things first, we need to make the community
aware of the long term affects abuse has on children, so it is definitely not a
project I will see to completion, but I am hoping it will gain popularity and
maybe the new volunteer who takes over my position or a health volunteer placed
somewhere in the province will be able to take on the project and continue it.
I also translated a proposal for World Vision
for a project that will buy calves for two soums (villages),where protein
mal-nutrion and rickets is very common in children under 5 years old and
pregnant mothers. The communities have agreed to build fences and building to
house the animals and the fodder. The two communities will be trained in how to
raise the calves and properly gather milk and make milk products from it. The
milk and dairy products will be given to pregnant mothers in the community and
the children who are suffering from malnutrition. The community will also be
able to sell a portion of the milk made, to help their economic status. It is
an interesting project and they are also doing a similar project involving
bees, giving a community bees and teaching them how to take care of them and
gather honey that can be sold for a profit. World Vision does a lot of cool
things, I would love to work for them in the future back in the States.
I have been working on two other
projects as well. A small one, for World No Smoking day, which involves 8-10
grade students. My counterpart and I planned it. Each school for a week will
have to do student run awareness activities regarding smoking. Also, teachers
must teach a set curriculum we came up with during this week. At the end of the
week, there will be a big competition, of course. The competition consists of
three parts: 1. The students must come up with an original song and dance about
the dangers of smoking 2. Compete in a Jeopardy like game that I made on the subject of smoking 3. The HD will
judge all the schools no smoking campaigns, the students must present on what
their schools did and make a poster showing the activities. This will take place next Tuesday. World
Vision is sponsoring us and donating prizes for the schools that win. Then on
Wednesday, there will be an awards ceremony and another presentation by the
students to the community in the town square. The governor and HD director will
speak and give out the prizes. The students from the top 3 schools will present
their campaigns and knowledge to the community members in the square. We ran
into issues with funding, both the Aimag and soum governments said no, that
they had no extra funding to give because the fiscal year was ending and they
used their budgeted money up, so luckily World Vision stepped in and said they
would be able to give us prizes, not the money directly that we were asking
for. Also, this is a very busy time for schools because it is the week before
finals, so we ended up having to switch the dates a couple times to accommodate
the finals schedule. But now we have a set time and date, and prizes to give
out, so hopefully the rest will run smoothly.
The other project I am working is a
workshop for doctors and social workers in all the soums. They will come in
August for a 4 day long workshop on Peer Education. A couple of the soum
hospital directors have asked the HD how to use peer educators and since Ariuk
and I attended a PEPFAR training on peer education, my director went straight
to us to come up with the training. I have been chosen to be lead on the
project, which is very exciting, it is the first project that I will completely
do from start to finish. I will make the curriculum, power points, handouts and
schedule. Ariuk will do the translating (so lucky to have him, it makes
everything so much easier). Ariuk and I decided that it would be best to hold a
training for the HD staff on peer education first, and then they can do the
training of the doctors and social workers in August, which is a great idea,
they should know the information too and this way Ariuk doesn’t have to run the
entire 4 days of training. So I am currently researching Peer Education and
Youth Involvement and how to train the doctors well enough in 4 days that they
can then train the hospital staff who will eventually train the students who
will become peer educators. I am really happy they are interested in learning
about peer education and how helpful it can be when teaching sensitive issues
to children. Capacity building at its finest! Peace Corps staff would be proud,
since that is what has been stressed since day one. We are not here to do their
work for them, or to give them money, we are here to build staff capacity and
teach them new ways of doing things, which is really not what I expected when I
first applied. The vision I had of Peace Corps was going into a town, building
schools and hospitals, giving them supplies and teaching them new methods.
Which is the exact opposite of the Peace Corps goal. They are actually really
against giving countries resources as in they won’t give them out, especially
money, because they gain no new knowledge and as soon as the volunteer leaves
they are back to square one, but by building their capacity we are giving them
tools to use in the future once we are gone and I hope I am doing that at my
HD. By giving them new activities and teaching English, I think it will help
them so much more than just writing grants for money that will only be a
onetime thing and once I am gone they have gained nothing. Of course, I have to
write grants for all the projects, but I always make sure to include a staff
member from my HD or a community member, so that they can gain that skill as
well and once I leave know how to look up grants and write for them. One of the
biggest things I have done for them I think, was to show them how to use Google
translate, because now they can go on websites that are in English and get new
information from them and also, I showed them how to use different data bases
to find supporting research that they can put in grants and taught the
epidemiologists how to use different US government health websites to look up
statistics they can compare their own countries too and to use several medical
databases to get information on diseases and injuries. These are things that
will help them in the future and every day I see them using the websites, it’s
great.
Other than working every day, I
have been running every morning and going for hikes in the evening. The weather
is just so gorgeous I can’t help to want to be outside all day. Plus, it is
light from 5am to 930pm. Just wonderful! I found this great spot to hike up to,
it is all giant boulders at the top that are perfect for laying out on and
reading. It is surrounded by purple flowers and green trees. It is gorgeous and
high enough up that Mongolians will probably never bother me, because they
really don’t hike up mountains that often (kids do, but not adults). Finally,
after about a month of running every morning and passing this one old man who
is always on his front stoop, he know understands that I am running for enjoyment/exercise
not because I am in trouble. Every single day for the past three weeks, I have
run by this man and every time he yells out in Mongolian “what happened my child?”. Every time I would
yell back “Hello. I am okay. I am running. Exercise.” (notice my short
sentences, still can’t seem to make complex sentences in Mongolian) and I would
laugh and keep running. On Monday, I ran by the man and this time instead of
asking me what happened, he just gave me two thumbs up. I smiled the biggest
smile at him and ran past him, happy that he finally understood and laughing
because it took him so long to understand why I was running. And now every day
since then it is just thumbs up. Yesterday, he had a friend with him and they
both gave me thumbs up and told me I was good American.
Jen and I went to the river last
weekend with the French agriculture volunteer and his friend who was visiting
Mongolia. At the river, he told us that he heard from some community members
that they thought Peace Corps Volunteers were American spies, spying on their
country. Jen and I busted out laughing, during training PC had warned us that
some people in Mongolia think we are spies, this was the first time we had
actually heard people voice it though. When we first came to Tsetserleg we had
to be interviewed by the Police and provide a written statement about what our
intentions were and about our life in America. We also were photographed and
fingerprinted. Maybe that is why: they are trying to keep track of all the
American spies in their province.
By far the best thing that happened
this month, was skyping my sister at her college graduation. It was amazing to
be able to watch her walk down the aisle in her cap and gown and then get to
talk with her as she sat there in the beginning of the ceremony. Technology
sure is amazing! I can’t imagine being in the PC when internet and electricity
wasn’t available!
This weekend is supposed to be in
the 80s, so I plan on spending the whole weekend down by the river. I love
summer! Also, the new volunteers arrive in Mongolia in a couple days to start
their training. Super excited to get a couple new volunteers in my town in
August.
